POLLY, TEXAS. Polly, once known as the J. P. Rodriguez settlement, is a small rural community located six miles northeast of Bandera and two miles north of State Highway 16 in eastern Bandera County. It was named for José Policarpo (Polly) Rodríguez,^qv who was a rancher in the area in the 1850s. The community became the focus of one of the county's four school districts in 1867 and was granted a free school in 1881. A post office was established at Polly in 1888, and by the mid-1890s it also had a Methodist church, a general store, and 300 residents. After 1900, however, it began to fade, and the post office was discontinued in 1912. The school at Polly was consolidated with the Bandera Independent School District in 1942. A church, a cemetery, and several scattered houses marked the community on county highway maps in the late 1940s, but by the 1980s only the cemetery appeared. No population estimates were available.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mrs. Howard Graves, History of Bandera County Schools for over a Century (Bandera, Texas: Bandera County Historical Survey Committee, 1973).

Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl